Unthinkable
by kristen5286
Summary: Takes place back in 12 after the war is over. Prim is dead. Peeta is dead. Haymitch struggles with his feelings for Katniss and the pain they are suffering after all they've survived. In Haymitch's POV. A possible Hayniss story but currently is just a one shot.


**AN: I'm writing another story (Found Happiness) and it's in Katniss's POV and I wanted to get inside Haymitch's head a little better. I took a few months off from writing that story and getting back into her head is easy since I had 3 Hunger Games books to get used to her train of thought. Haymitch, on the other hand, is a harder read. I don't know yet if I want to make this a complete story or make this a one shot. Anyway, I wrote this and I thought I might as well post it since someone here might enjoy reading it. Let me know what y'all think. Also, I'm going to name this Chapter 1 just in case I continue with this. One more thing, I may eventually change the name of this. Since this was mostly intended for personal use and understanding Haymitch more I didn't think of a good title. Sorry. **

Chapter 1

Every day is the same, and every night too. Wake, drink, pass out, repeat. Always the same, never changing. Day after day, week after week, month after month. The same.

One day it's different, only not really. One day she comes over. One day she stars drinking with me. We don't talk. I barely acknowledge her. That's why it's not really different. Sometimes we share a bottle sitting on the couch or at the table. Sometimes she has her own. Sometimes she passes out here, sometimes she makes it home first.

Always the same.

Somehow we have food now and again. I think Greasy Sae brings it by. More often than not lately she stays here. She stopped going home most nights about a month ago, I guess. Time doesn't exist for us. We drink until we pass out and start up again when we're too sober to stay asleep.

She's mad at me. She stays but she's mad. I don't blame her. I'm mad at me too. I failed her. I failed him. I chose her. I chose her even after I promised I'd choose him. But I made him the same promise about her too. He was a better person than her and I put together; he was who I should have saved. But when it came time to choose I couldn't _not_ choose her. I haven't allowed myself to dwell on the reasons why I chose her but deep down I knew that as much as it'd hurt to lose him, losing her would be much worse.

For weeks the Capital toyed with us. Lead us to believe that there was still time to save him. That he was still alive. Everything we saw on TV had been prerecorded. Every lead we thought we were getting from inside intel was fabricated. All lies. Lies meant to give us hope. Draw us in. And it worked. Oh boy did it ever work. Katniss came running to the Capital full speed ahead. She only faltered at the last moment because she spotted Prim. The explosion took her. Quickly.

While Katniss recovered from the burns she received during the blast Gale found Peeta. He had been in one of the cells Snow had below his mansion. He had been dead for weeks by the time we found him. He'd been tortured and starved until, finally, someone showed him some mercy and put a bullet in his brain. I saw him that way. I see him that way. Every time I close my eyes I see his lifeless form lying in an unnatural position on the cold, blood stained, cement floor. I'll never forget him that way.

She didn't see. Thank goodness. She never saw him like that and she'll never know of the dismal state we found him in. we told her he'd been shot, that was the reason for the closed casket. We told her he didn't look worse than the last time she'd seen him on TV. That was a lie. What good would have come from telling her the truth though? She'd lost her sister and her love in the same day. Wasn't that bad enough? I thought so. When that so called friend of hers, Gale, suggested we tell her exactly the state we found the boy in I punched him square in the jaw, knocking him out cold. No one argued to tell her more after that.

Once she was healed enough to stand she was awarded the honor of killing Snow herself. Apparently she'd won a coin toss with Coin. Ha! She shocked us all when she shot and killed Coin instead. I have to say, as stupid as that girl can be, sometimes she gets one right. They hauled her away faster than you could say "Panem". I fought tooth and nail to keep her alive, again, and get her back to 12. I'm supposed to be her mentor or guardian. I'm supposed to be making sure she stays safe and alive, and away from everyone outside of 12. I'm not doing a very good job. Then again, the only thing I've ever really been good at is drinking myself into a stupor. Keeping other people alive is the one thing I probably do worst.

Time passes, I think anyway, and we continue our pattern of drinking and sleeping. After a while I begin to notice things about her. Things I either haven't noticed in a long, long while, or never paid attention to before. Things like how young and innocent she looks when she sleeps. Or how storms make her nightmares worse, whereas they have the opposite effect on me. I notice how sometimes when she's really drunk she giggles. It's the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. It reminds me of birds chirping in the springtime after the last snow has melted. A sound full of life and joy and happiness. I'd give anything to hear that sound every day.

Sometimes I catch her watching me when she thinks I'm asleep. For a long time she'll sit there, looking, and I swear I can see the pain leaving her eyes. I know what that's like. I do the same thing too. When it's really late and she's long since passed out, occasionally I'll find myself watching her, studying her. Memorizing everything I can about her face, her hair, all of her. In those rare moments I feel not quite so broken. In those moments I feel warmth and maybe even a little bit of happiness. But then, all too soon, her nightmares start, then she wakes up screaming and finds her bottle to pacify her back to sleep.

On especially bad nights I find myself wondering, in my inebriated state, what it'd be like to hold her. To pull her close to my chest with her hair in my face and tell her everything will be ok eventually. Just once, I wonder what it'd feel like to be the one she reached for, instead of the bottle. I wonder.

The more time that goes by the more I don't like our arrangement. She's so young, so beautiful; she deserves more from life than wasting it away at the bottom of a bottle. She deserves to live, to love, and to be loved. She deserves everything I can't give her. That realization hurts. I don't like that it hurts. Why can't it be me? Why can't I give her a good life full of love? Because, you old fool, you're too old. Too old and damaged. She wouldn't want me anyway, and I wouldn't blame her for that. I'm too selfish anyway. I should be encouraging her to stop wasting her life away. I shouldn't allow her to drink with me, I should have her hunting again, going to the Hob, sleeping at her own house.

But I can't. I can't bring myself to telling her these things. What if she listened to me? What if she took my advice and left and never came back? I'd have no reason to hold on anymore. Nothing to look forward to, to live for.

The day I realized that I loved her was the worst day of my life. That was the day I knew that there was absolutely no way I could ever have the one thing in the world that could make me truly happy. I knew I'd never be able to call her mine. She had better sense than to love me back. I drank just like any other day only this day I was on a mission. I was drinking to pass out and never wake up again. After knowing the depth of my love for that girl I wanted to die. I hadn't realized before that day that I'd had hope in my life, little things to look forward to and keep me from falling over the edge. All hope was gone now. Th only reason I am still here today is a fluke. Bad food. Greasy Sae left us some meat from a bird that had been ill and I threw it all up. All the white liquor, all the meat. I cried as I flushed it down the toilet. I knew I'd never have the strength to try and take my own life again. I'd barely had the nerve to do it in the first place.

Story of my life. Haymitch gets everything he never wanted. What a lucky bastard I am. Now it's just the same thing day in and day out. Wake, drink, pass out, repeat. Be envious, tis a glamorous life I lead. Wake, drink, pass out, repeat.

**AN2**: **Sorry for having to kill Peeta off. I just can't imagine a Katniss/Haymitch relationship where Peeta is still alive.**


End file.
